


Passing Time

by Ketchrey



Category: Red vs Blue
Genre: AU, Churchington, Cuddling by fire, Everybody lives happily, Fluff, M/M, Tender pinning, rvb secret santa 2019, time paradox
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:47:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ketchrey/pseuds/Ketchrey
Summary: Church’s reality on Sidewinder persists on a stalemate with the neighbouring Reds.His squad; an ex-honour student, a party girl, and a dysfunctional ex-special ops agent who is beginning to have him convinced that they come from separate pocket dimensions.
Relationships: Leonard L. Church/Agent Washington
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	Passing Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IdleNight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdleNight/gifts).



> Merry belated Christmas IdleNight—I’m am so sorry I meant to post last night but the winds picked up and my power went out!!  
> All up and running now!!! You asked for Churchington with lots of fluff—there’s a smidgeon of hurt/comfort but it’s only there for the payoff. Everyone is happy I promise!!!  
> Merry Christmas:)  
> Xxxx

Thunk! Pa _thwump_. Pit, pat — _Thump!_

A candy red haemorrhoid pillow spirals mid flight, slapping the wall and rolling back to its thrower. Over the hours it had lost much of its air, presently resembling a soggy donut when Grif’s hands squeeze and reassert for taking aim.

“You are going to contract herpes from handling that.” Simmons cautions, twitching as rubber smacks the wall again.

“I didn’t blow it up, Kai did.” Grif defends.

“Oh well excuse me. You have now _officially_ contracted herpes.”

Outside it was still snowing, for about the sixteenth consecutive hour. Odours were beginning to breathe and lag around the base’s compact ground floor.

”Are you guys still keeping tabs on Sarge?” Church speaks from the opposite end of the futon couch, lifting his voice over the smack of butt bagel and the droning blizzard winds.

Acting as senior incapable of his lot, Simmons notches his head foreword, bleary eyed and frowning. Grif’s tree trunk legs have him pinned more then they have him comfortably blanketed. Squirming wouldn’t do him any good.

”Last I checked he was patrolling up and down the halls.” Grif replies ahead of Simmons. “Hey though, what about your dude? Hasn’t he been playing in the snow for a bit too long?”

“I’m not worried.” Church deflects, flexing to fix the toasty warmth of his skin-tights. “Washington runs like a Swiss watch.”

Grif shoots his brows into the dust of his bangs, mightily pelting the donut at the wall.

“I could hear him coughing up a storm right before he went out.” Simmons catches Church by the eyes, and then averts them like the contact had burnt.

Absorbed with his boredom Grif winds back his arm. “How come you wouldn’t know about a dip in the team’s health bar, Church?”

Whum— _thwap!_

Simmons is staring at Church like he might have been clued in on some key details when the cushion bonks against his jaw. He lurches upright but goes nowhere trapped in Grif’s legs.

“Fan _fucking_ tastic!” Simmons claws out at Grif, who blinks at the fuss but otherwise sits unbothered. He lets the struggle go until it nearly unbalances them all on futon, then he adjusts. Simmons squirms out of his confines, scrawnier limbs smacking Grif on the ribs and his stout belly in the fight out.

“Tell me I did not just hear about Simmons picking up an STI from my big brother.” Kai comes into the kitchenettes like the heralding angel of derailment. “Always, _always_ wear protection boys.”

Grif is roughly assisting Simmons out of his lap, put holds off for spitting daggers across the room.

Kai works through the disturbance she’d caused, stretching up to the cabinets above the sink station. “Sarge has set up a sniper’s nest outside mine and Micheal’s rooms. If that grabs anybody’s attention...”

“That’s nowhere near where I’ll be sleeping tonight, so nope. Can’t say that it does.” Grif growls.

Bent into the counter, Kai clicks her tongue at him but doesn’t argue. Passing the pit of water she’s boiled on the stove she plucks an armload of mugs from the cupboard. She sets them down and peels the lid off the cocoa powder’s tin.

Church swivels, not succeeding to conceal his alarm at full proportion. “Has he got the sniper rifle with him?”

“He’s always got it.” Simmons affirms glumly, spread at the edge of the futon. “We’ve had...incidents.”

“You guys should stop coming over for a while.” Kai brings the attention back to herself as she’s lifting the pot off a rear element. “Sarge’s territorial beef cannot be good for whatever is going on with Wash.”

“Is Marty McFly no longer trying to get himself back to the future?” Grif raises his brows on point. “The idea was that if we hold out for long enough, somebody looses interest, yeah? We just have to hold out for longer.”

Kai chirps wordlessly, then she licks at her finger and dives it to the bottom the sugar bowl.

“Wash is...He’s perfectly balanced.” Church says sharply, coming to the defence of the absentee.

It’s Grif who blows a sigh into his shirt but droops his shoulders to signal leaving it alone. Simmons however, has his resting bitch face on and is channeling it outward.

“Is it our problem that you picked up another stray from the debunked super soldier initiative?” Simmons folds his arms petulantly, ignoring the tensions dropped into their circle.

Behaving out of gut instinct, Church sweeps blindly out toward the windows glass, eyes following his gesture out to where the night pieces itself together in silky greys of blizzard, a chafed silhouette under the trees.

“Dude’s chopping down trees with a battle axe in sub zero conditions.” Mutters Grif, his eyes lashes flapping twice open and shut. “We should all be living on our Goddamn tiptoes.”

Deliberately clinking down the mugs she’s been blending, Kai glowers them down with such authority that it splits through their seating arrangement like a whip. “He pulls his own weight and then some. You should be rejoicing, Dex.”

“He said he was on a mission from the future.” Simmons vowels sound constipated. “Whatever you’ve got on him... Church, however you knew him before. Saner Freelancers have tried to kill us.”

“He likes me all right.” Kai grins, unbothered by her brothers deep digging scowl.

“Then you should be fine, and we can take some time off from the constant visitations.” He looks past the competitive silence of siblings, checking in with Church for a feeler.

Confident that the surges of panic haven’t breeched into any part of his face yet, Church indicates towards the exit hall. “Door’s over there.”

Simmons intercepts Grif, proactively rising and cuing the other along by nudging on his torso pads.

After they’ve gone clinks of a spoon against microwave safe China ricochets between the walls. Church would have outlasted he thinks, but then Kai clears the air.

“If it were _my_ ex-boyfriend who came back to me from an apocalyptic time zone, there would a lot less of this subtextual pinning.”

Church rotates over the back of the futon, landing on her backside to glare.

Her hand points back at him, thumb and forefinger into an air gun and clicks. “Pour that glaze over the cake, while it’s steamy.”

“Stop it.”

“Oh ho _ho_ , somebody’s frustrated yeah?” Her lips close to clean sugar and cocoa powder off a spoon. “It’s just that I’ve noticed, whenever the Reds have ask about his history you don’t remember anything at all. Funny that, when he comes around you two look at each other like old, rowdy war buddies.”

His stomach slides against its own walls unhelpfully.

“Did you consider at all that you could be misreading everything?”

Kai looks at him so supportively that for a moment, he’s grateful to have her without having to deduct points for her crass, highly intrusive tendencies. The moment passes though and she reverts back to smirking suggestively.

“You are so edgy and damaged.”

Church drums his fingers on the side of the couch, indignation reddening his face. “I am not edgy.”

“Sure babe.” Kai sucks some more chocolate off her thumb. “...And you did not sublet a room to him in our bunker virtually nothing of reference—”

“He specializes in killing, did you want him to be roaming around us as a free agent?”

—“or gaslight Sarge’s inferiority complex to execute the perfect diversion until you could figure out the mystery of your heart?”

Gathering the mugs she’s topped precariously into two hands, she walks up to him where he’s stock still on the couch. Inclining the cup balanced on her ring and pinkie finger to him, she laughs sweetly.

“God do I love my emotionally stunted dad.”

Church tries to swat away the sheen from her smile but falters through it. He accepts the mug from her though, and only to ensure it doesn’t tip out into his lap.

Kai waggles her eyebrows at him until he’s scowling then sends herself off, departing with two cups for herself and Caboose down the hall.

“Is she right about that?”

Church reacts, springing so abruptly that he has to clamour to save his mug from tilting out in his lap.

Washington enters the rec room with his arms loaded high of assorted kindling and logs. He clunks over the floor, dropping slushy treads from his boots and silvery dust from the snowflakes clung to his shoulders.

“Have you been putting Sarge onto my back on purpose?” He poses the question offhandedly, crouching by the fire’s hearth to unload. The pieces roll alongside each other in hollowed percussion into Wash’s quick gloved hands. He sets into stacking them up.

Church’s skin hums, quick to flee from the heat of this guilt. “Were you spying?” His voice pitching seedily. “Because that reputation of yours doesn’t really leave you the legroom for behaving sketchy.”

“If you weren’t always speaking to each other in raised voices, maybe sensitive conversations would not be able to traverse through walls.” Wash breaks off some kindling to push between his stack of oak and cedar, already popping with hunger. A light salting of snow had stuck to his hair, becoming lesser and lesser next to the direct flames. The wet snow dramatizes his roots, and the orange and sunshine white of fire raptly has his wild tips gleam like faze brass alloy.

Church swallows the offbeat pattern of his pulse, thoughts racing for something to preserve the private atmosphere. “The guys think that you’re coming down with something.”

Grousing into the flames Wash nudges at the logs making up his teepee stack.

“Why have I got to hear about potential patient 0 situations from the frickin Reds?”

Washington drops a log abruptly when the flames leap for his wrist. “I have not been sick.” He denies unconvincingly, masking the glass shards razing in his throat. ...“Now you’re receiving information from the Reds? That’s unlike you.”

That innocent statement punctures through to the bone. Church drinks one last time before setting his mug to the side distractedly. ”Is anybody here how you remember them?” He asks, working it in venomously.

Omitting Church’s resentment and churning out a frown Wash contemplates the question.

“Caboose was enrolled at MIT before he got drafted, you said.” Wash’s voice contorts. Without needed to look back Church knows it is the same airy disbelief as he’d demonstrated the last time something had come up. The first time, was hearing that Tex wasn’t the name of his badass girlfriend but of the equally badass Russell terrier his sister Carolina had gifted him before shipping off the the airforce.

“He got a full ride in mechanical engineering, which will be waiting for him when his service is up.“

“Good.” Washington’s head is turning in slow arcs, but his eyes are alight. He chippers up again then, mechanically upbeat. “You know where I found Tucker? Off on Sangheilli promoting the anti-battalion efforts.”

“Oh yeah?” Church has to search his memory back, way far back to redefine the face of ‘Tucker’. Some kid he got stuck with in basics maybe? “He went the patriotic route, that’s cool.”

“They are all...You all do well for yourselves in this pocket...” He chuckles hoarsely, wincing at his throat.

“Not sure if that’s how I’d describe it...” He talks loudly, praying for it cover up his enamoured paralysis and not flop. “Most days it gets pretty dull for us. We keep indoors, doing whatever to pass the time.”

“I get that.” Wash asserts a sideway glance off into the faded corner of the room where the haemorrhoid donut lays partially caved in. He pries them back, maybe curving just a fraction too early and hooking Church’s eyes from their mildly mortified fix. ...Craving and carnal, and then avoidance sweeps over his fire lit eyes and Washington tears away.

The hitch impeding his oxygen has Church frantically bobbing with his throat, discretely holding down the shivers.

“You have to safeguard this Church.” Wash says, like it’s become his catchphrase. “This is the longest-running paradox.”

“Dude, you’ve got to stop with that.” Church recollects, the flustered nerves still threatening to shoot out of him hardly reining themselves back in time. “The time paradox, you know that it’s nuts right? I’m out there parroting to the guys that you’re sound, but man I don’t know.”

Wash looks at him here, with the violet luggage under his eyes and hurt creases at their rims. “Can you remember what we were to each other?”

“I remember that your name is David.” Church admits, feeling naked. “The people you’ve been looking up—Some of them I’ve never met. Every bit of this is nuts.”

Behind that infallible reservation, Wash shrugs like it could have only been expected. “I’m talking about another parallel universe which I travelled out of and back in time. It sounds like crackpot theory.”

Washington turns back toward the fire, but his knees slide out of balance and nearly throw him in. Recovering wobbly near to the open flame, he muffles a cough and sits back.

Eyes tumbling inelegantly, Church directs into the kitchen. “There’s a fourth mug on the counter. Kai has some water left on the back burner.”

Wash carries his eyes off in the implied direction. The rose of creasing next to his eyes collapse with tenderness where he sees the blue mug with ribbons of steam hovering over it. He’s nearly smiling fully while he climbs to his feet.

“I watched her put four spoons of sugar in ours and do nothing with yours.”

“Because she remembered.” Wash murmurs, rough hands surrounding the mug. “She’s been watching how I take coffee on the late shifts.”

“While we’re on that subject, I want you to lay off from those. If it’s been meant to help you keep avoiding Sarge, nobody’s making you do that from outside of the building. You could maybe like, break the mould and come out here with the rest of us.”

A miffed animal sound emanates out of him and Washington grimly paces back around the travesty of futon, taking the space Grif and Simmons had left.

“Our arrangement works fine.” His grey eyes have faded almost dreamily, flooding out the same warmth as his drink and proceeding to thin. “I do not mind being fit in wherever.”

From an untraceable place of courage, Church overpowers himself, petting down the futon cover next to his thighs.

“Fit yourself here.”

Wash’s gaze alters back and forth haltingly between conflict and tenderness, and then finally only the ladder looping through his fluorescent light eyes.

“One of us needs to be up, keeping the fire fed.”

“One of us will be.” Church says, assuming charge.

Wash’s knuckles turn pale against the mug. Slowed by apprehension, he bows to set the drink down with Church’s on the floor. Fitting each other begins awkwardly, with Wash’s stare trained into the motion of arms lifting to flow away from him. The body weight crest first into his shoulder, rigid as Wash lets go of a breath. The Freelancer sniffles crisply, stinking up the air with the foul waft of sickness. At this distance, the crescents beneath his eyes are highlighted by clearer stains of rose pink and violet. Letting his neck slouch a little closer, Wash lets a second breath go.

Rumpled hairs stiffen down his chest, becoming at ease to the lagging breathes pushing between his buttons. Slouched mid length against his torso, Wash’s body wracks gently from a silent coughing fit. 

That’s a grimace, Church thinks. A grimace overlapping a smile that feels duplicitously calculated from him while he is wilting so surely into sleep.

In the morning he would dig a magnetic thermometer out of the supply closet, some more cough drops and vapour rub. Somebody else could be charged with fire duty. Washington could stay right here.

“The Reds would like us to go our separate ways for a bit, and I think it’s a good call.” Church mutters, hopefully veiling his more selfless concerns. ...“Until you aren’t contagious, you’re gonna be kept on lock down.”

Wash’s unbalanced neck lolls, putting himself up face side, possibly not all the way awake when he grumbles unintelligibly. “Influenza’s not contagious.”

“Well don’t you breathe on me anyways.” Church grumbles ineffectually, raptured from the words that tickle and stick down the open v of his chest.

Defiance showing up in the hollows of his eyes and cheeks, Washington’s eyes flutter shut.


End file.
